Guide to Americans
The Xenophobe’s Guide to Americans has been sitting in my bookshelf since I bought it from Beijing 2 years ago. For some random reason, I brought it out at our Simpsons Sunday dinner party yesterday. We randomly picked up tid-bit passages to read out from. In the opening passage:
Forwarned is Forearmed
Americans are like children: noisy, curious, unable to keep a secret, not given to subtlety, and prone to misbehave in public. Once one accepts the Americans’ basically adolescent nature, the rest of their culture falls into place, and what at first seemed thoughtless and silly appears charming and energetic.
Visitors may be overwhelmed by the sheer exuberant friendliness of Americans, especially in the central and southern parts of the country. Sit next to an American on an airplane and he will immediately address you by your first name, ask "So–how do you like it in the States?", explain his recent divorce in intimate detail, invite you home for dinner, offer to lend you money, and wrap you in a warm hug on parting.
This does not necessarily mean he will remember your name the next day. Americans are friendly because they just can’t help it; they like ot be neighbourly and want to be liked. However…a few happy moments with an American do not translate into a permanent commitment of any kind. Indeed, permanent commitments are what Americans fear the most. This is a nation whose most fundamental social relationships is the casual acquiantance.
Given that our dinner party included an eclectic group of a Palestinian-American with his Spanish wife, an American who has spent the last few years in Brazil and a Singaporean (c’est moi!), the li’ll book certainly made for a good conversational piece.
So much of what Stephanie Faul (born and bred in the USA) writes is spot-on amidst the irreverent humor.
When they go on holidays Americans become even more American than usual, if that’s possible, wearing crazy-patterned shorts, white running shoes, and T-shirts wiht offensive slogans. They carry their wallets in crescent-shaped ‘fanny packs’ that only emphasise their girth, and patronise ice-cream and fudge vendors.
America provides vast social mobility. A plumber could easily have a son who’s a college professor, and just as easily, a college professor could have a son who’s a plumber, especially when the son discovers the direction of the salary differential between the 2 professions.
In other countries those with hereditary wealth may lead lives of ostentatious indolence. This is not the case in the US where even those who don’t need to work pretend they do. Anyone without a job is a nonperson. An American conversational staple is to ask "What do you do?"…The only forbidden answer is "Nothing. I’m rich."
When they talk about class, Americans mean a loose consideration of background and attitude that is unrelated to wealth. Donald Trump, for example, while possessed of great wealth, has remarkably little class, while Katherine Hepburn has class down to her toes.
Most car are used for daily commuting; less than 6% of the American workforce uses public transportation to get to work. Some of the country’s wonderful high-speed highways now carry 3 or more times the intended amount of traffic and twice a day turn into parking lots. San Francisco and Washington DC win the prize for the 2 cities with the worst congestion.
Even if suburban residents could walk to anything other than the house next door, they wouldn’t. Walking is un-American. Whenever possible, Americans drive and, if necessary, wait to get a parking place close to their destination. Congestion occurs as drivers circle the shops, looking for a parking space that’s closer to where they want to go.
America has no official religion of any sort, other than the near-universal worship of Mammon and widespread devotion to the cult of Disney…
In the area known as the Bible Belt, an ill-definined zone that stretches roughly from the lower East Coast westward towards Missouri and Kansas, small independent churches sprout like cotton plants, usually preaching variations on the popular themes that evolution is a lie, unbelievers are going to hell, and God likes America best.
Americans like to believe that the world cannot possibly function without their presence…
Children are raised to be independent and cautious, with a strong sense of self-esteem. American parents treat their children with a near-deference unheard of in most European households: "Would you like Froot Loops or Captain Crunch for breakfast? Is that enough milk? Ok, I’ll put it into the teddy bear bowl instead."…
Children are raised in as risk-free a manner as possible. Along with his or her first bicycle, an American child also receives a safety helmet. The government continually tests toys to make sure they can’t cause harm even when used inappropriately…On the other hand, in many areas teenagers are given a car as soon as they are old enough to drive (usually 16). The insurance payments are astronomical, but since there’s little public transportation it saves hours every day for mothers. Such cossetted, protected children grow up into perfect Americans–self-centered, self-assured, competent, cheerful, and eager to try something life-threatening now that their parents are finally off their backs.
Martha Stewart, a television personality with her own magazine, has earned a fortune telling American women how to iron their sheets, grow their own salads, and make dried flower wreaths. Virtually no women actually do these things. For many Americans, fantasising about their own potential is a full-time activitiy.
Americans know that whatever kind of sex it is they’re having, it could be better. Books about improving one’s sexlife top the sales charts, and women’s magazines in particular feature at least one How to Have Better Sex article every month.
Manners
Americans are intrigued by good manners, in part because they don’t have any.
St Patrick’s Day turns everybody in the US into honorary Irishmen and women and everything turns green, even things not normally seen in that color. Bars serve green beer, bakeries produce green bagels…It is traditional on St. Patrick’s day to consume a minimum of one serving of an alcoholic beverage in an Irish bar, and on this day all bars become Irish, as do all musicians. The nation’s real alcoholics refer to St. Patrick’s Day as ‘amateur night’.
New Year’s Eve features humiliation of a qualitatively different sort: if one is single, it becomes essential to find a companion for this, the most important date night of the year. Being dateless on New Year’s Eve is proof positive of a person’s social and sexual undesirability.
Thanksgiving…is time for far flung families to join around a common table…to return to their ancestral nest, where they et too much, drink too much, and pick up year-old arguments as though they’d never left home…The goal is to eat so much that nobody can move, and then watch football on television. On this day it is traditional to bow one’s head and give thanks for life’s many blessings. However, most celebrants are actually silently giving thanks that they only se their families once a year.
American coins and bills have been specifically designed to confuse natives of other nations. Coins inclue the penny, nickel, dime and quarter, not oe of which is labelled with its actual cents value in numerals. American folding money is green, of uniform size and design, with a picture of a dead President on it. Thus a $10 bill looks a lot like a $1 bill or a $100 bill. Since the largest bill in general circulation is $20…the confusion doesn’t affect the average American, who never pays cash anyway and uses a credit card for all purchases costlier than a Coke.
Grits are a quintessentially American dish…Southerners adore them. Northerners think they’re the reason the South lost the Civil War. Starting somewhere around Maryland an invisible line crosses the country, below it grits are considered essential for life, while above it they’re banned as being unfit for human consumption.
